The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 sought to keep Native children in tribal communities. The Supreme Court may change that this spring.

Childhood photos of Chris Stearns, who was born a Navajo, but was raised by white Evangelical parents in New Jersey. Kholood Eid for The New York Times

Chris Stearns has two distinct memories from his childhood in the late 1960s. The first is somewhat hazy: a crowded New York City picnic for white families who had adopted Native American boys and girls, somewhere at a hilly park. Mr. Stearns had never seen so many people — he was an only child in a Colonial-style house that backed onto a golf course in South Jersey — and the event was overwhelming.